Experience speaking here and nothing else. In my experience, class seems to be playing a bigger role everyday. People, especially white people, are terrified of poverty and the people in it. Its so bad, you'd think poverty was infectious.

I think the 1960s drove racism into secrecy and it re-emerged as class prejudice. All the stupid, ignorant and ugly assumptions and opinions white people once dumped on minorities are now being dumped on poor people. In their heads, white people are thinking "minority" and saying "poor" (and immigrant). In other words, we're now dealing with white supremacy disguised as classism.

My kids went to elementary school where 97% of students qualified for the free lunch and/or ESL programs. In kindergarten I was recruited and joined a group of parents who were determined to build a great school. We succeeded - BIG time.

You would not believe how many times parents at the other 3 elementary schools went to the school board complaining about everything our school was getting and their schools were not getting. "If we can't have it, they can't have it" - is a quote!

It got so bad, so ugly and so mean, the superintendent called a couple of us to his office and we worked out a plan. After that, our parents went to school board meetings and made regular reports to the board, and gave the newspaper copies of our reports. Those newspaper articles inspired passion throughout the community for our little school. OMG, all we needed to do was call, and help was on the way.

You see, the district was NOT paying for anything different at our school. Our parents were literally paying for the extra programs, equipment, technology, supplies, aides, tutors and field trips by writing grants, holding lots of great fund raising events, building partnerships with local businesses and local government, putting everything we had to use and recruiting volunteers.

One day, a grandma showed up at our meeting and told us her story. She said she'd been a bad mother, and her daughter had ended up on drugs and was in prison. Now she was raising her grandchildren, and this time she wanted to do it right. She'd seen a cute little popcorn machine in her granddaughter's classroom and wondered if she could use it to help raise money. Heck yes! For the next six years, grandma sold popcorn at lunchtime everyday, and at every event, ceremony and fair in town, including chamber of commerce luncheons. She made enough money to buy ALL new playground equipment for our school (popcorn alone!!!!). Go Grandma. Yup, her grandchildren stayed at the top of their classes. I do so, so, so love successes stories.

Our farmworker parents worked with kids and parents and landscaped the entire campus, including a vegetable garden for the cafeteria. Yum, yum, veges and Ranch Dressing and popcorn.

My point is this. Our test scores went up, up, up and we always did better than the year before. I still think the key to our kid's success, was parental involvement. We made parenting at our school fun, rewarding, happy, successful and important. We had a blast. Success breeds success. We cried when our kids graduated elementary school.

You wouldn't believe what an army of parents can accomplish. True story.